10 Quotes From Famous Artists -- My Interpretation

Let's start with one of Picasso's most famous quotes:

1. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Picasso 

Bouquet of Peace (1954), Picasso

I totally agree with Picasso. Most children love to color and paint and even draw until someone criticizes their work or tries to make them do it differently. I remember being told that I couldn’t make a career out of art. What we need more of is encouragement, especially when we think we've failed. Part of growing up is learning from our mistakes. I love to see adults attending Paint Nite classes to try their hands at painting. We all deserve a chance to channel our inner child. Expressing yourself freely through art is a way to do just that!

2. “Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.” – Pissarro

Peasant Women Planting Stakes
(1891), Pissarro

I think that most people are impressed when they see a colorful sunrise or sunset and may even capture it on their cell phones today. Nature can certainly be humbling. Pissarro and French painter, Jean-François Millet found it humbling to paint peasants doing their everyday activities. Pissarro humbled himself by dressing like them. The artists were able to find beauty in the mundane and familiar and were often criticized for it by the wealthier ruling classes.

The Gleaners (1857), Millet

3. “Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.” – Pissarro

Woman Washing Her Feet in a Brook (1894), Pissarro

Beautiful things are often exploited or objectified as being worth more than other things. Even Pissarro was deemed unworthy as an Impressionist by anti-Semitic artists such as Renoir and Degas. He was friends with Cezanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh though. Pissarro saw beauty and painted it, while others rejected his work as nothing.

As far as the ability to interpret, I think that Pissarro wanted to paint meaningful works. Perhaps Impressionism leads to more interpretation because it provides less information (if that makes sense). Canadian artist, Ron Carwardine wrote, "Interpretation includes very real feelings for elements such as light, shadow, color, wind, weather, value, contrast, composition and subject matter."

4. “The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art,

is not after all tied to the subject,

but to the pictorial representation.
In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly
without avoiding it.” – Paul Klee

Rembrandt Self-Portrait beside da Vinci's Mona Lisa

In 1878, when Margaret Wolfe Hungerford published her book, "Molly Bawn" we first heard, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." How an artist interprets a subject creates beauty for us to appreciate regardless of its actual appearance. Rembrandt wasn't much to look at, though his self-portraits were magnificent and quite prolific. 

Albrecht Dürer said, “Nature holds the beautiful, for the artist who has the insight to extract it. Thus, beauty lies even in humble, perhaps ugly things, and the ideal, which bypasses or improves on nature, may not be truly beautiful in the end.”

5. “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” – Degas

The Blue Dancers (1899), Degas

Artists must see in order to create their vision of something, but not everyone sees exactly what the artist expected us to see (which is okay). While he may make us look, even focus on something particular, it is up to the viewer to interpret what he is seeing, much like how the artist interpreted when he painted it. I'm sure that Pissarro could have said it better, as he understood the interpretation part.

Some criticize Degas for objectifying women and call him a voyeur. But they often overlook the fact that he was also an anti-Semitist. Check out this The Dark Side of Degas article from the Chicago Tribune.

6. “There are no lines in nature, only color, one against another.” – Manet

Roses in a Champagne Glass (1882), Manet

I am totally on board with Manet. I can see a need for a line sometimes, but I am more impressed when I see colors side-by-side creating a line. Shading and subtle changes in value tend to soften the overall effect while contrasting light and dark more sharply provide a focus.

7. “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” – Picasso

The Angelus (1857-59), Millet

I’ve blogged about how Van Gogh was inspired by Japanese artists and French artist, Jean-François Millet, and painted his own versions of their works. 

The Angelus After Millet (1880), Van Gogh

Van Gogh did much more than copy a bunch of Millet's paintings -- he made them his own. Is that stealing? No, he gave his admiration and paid homage to the artist. Van Gogh's fellow artist and friend, Camille Pissarro, who tried to help him out during his illness, perhaps said it best, from the 1954 article, The Humble and Colossal Pissarro: “Father to Us All”, written by Alfred Werner, 

Pissarro himself told two artist friends not to be afraid of resemblances,
for it was wrong to think “that artists are the sole inventors of their styles
and that to resemble someone else is unoriginal.”

8. “Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.” – Dali

Bird and Dali by Murat Kalkavan

I think what Dali was asking is, why have wings if you aren’t going to fly? Why amass intelligence without using it for some good purpose (he probably meant scientific discoveries). Dali was an artist who enjoyed reading scientific journals and studying the written works of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. He was also obsessed with double images and optical illusions.

I kept this quote on my list because I love this painting that pays homage to the artist. It also feeds into the next quote about creativity and art.

9. “Art is the most valued thing in the world...
it is the expression of the highest form of human energy,
the creative power nearest to the divine. The power is within - the question is how to reach it.” – Arthur Wesley Dow

Boats at Rest (1891), Dow

Art may not be the most valued thing, but I certainly do feel that it should be more valued than it often is. The divine part is that God gave us talents and an ability to create things when he created us, our brains, and our beautiful surroundings. It’s like Dali’s quote (above) if I may paraphrase, “Art without creativity or creativity without art is a boat without an oar.”

10. “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”

– Bob Ross

I loved watching Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting on TV. I'm happiest when some budding artist takes my project constraints and creates something that doesn't necessarily resemble the sample artwork. Although my students may think they made a mistake, like muddying their watercolors while trying to paint concentric circles, I see the beauty in the fortuitous outcome. It's those 'accidents' that I look forward to when I'm teaching art. 

I hope that my students preserve their artfulness through adulthood and maintain a lifelong appreciation for beauty and self-expression.